


The Physician's Quest

by AJHall



Series: The Queen of Gondal [12]
Category: Gondal - Bronte children, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-28
Updated: 2013-01-28
Packaged: 2017-11-27 06:04:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 16,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/658753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AJHall/pseuds/AJHall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock, Crown Prince of Gaaldine, is a marked man. His brother has proclaimed  him an outlaw and decreed that those who knowingly assist him will share his fate.  But, five years ago, under the guise of the consumptive Mr Verney, Sherlock rescued the life-savings of one Martha Hudson, widow, in the town of Sancta Maria inter Prata.  Mrs Hudson always repays her debts.  Even when that involves facing up to Lord Moran, the most ruthless assassin in the three kingdoms.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kalypso](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Kalypso).



> Thanks to caulkhead, for betaing

One of the corners of the paper had been imperfectly secured; it fluttered in the light evening breeze. For some obscure reason it irritated him almost beyond measure. He burned with the urge to go up to the church door and hammer in another nail, to ensure it stayed straight.

He did not do it, of course. He was a marked man, an outlaw. Countless pairs of eyes were on the lookout. Being caught straightening the poster proclaiming his own banishment would be a peculiarly idiotic way for all this to end.

In any event, he knew the words by heart. A week ago, at a little church in an obscure village ( _soldier trudging home after mercenary service abroad, five days march from his home village, might as well have been from the Moon_ ) he’d heard the proclamation from the pulpit, sensed the collective indrawn breath from the packed congregation, felt the bottom of his world give way beneath him, fallen down, down, spiralling endlessly into the abyss.  

Before that moment he had believed himself prepared. He had wagered and lost. ( _So close. Holy Virgin, so close. I had him. I swear, I had him._ )  Mycroft had never been the sort to forgive a debt. Nor, had he been so minded, was this particular quittance his to give.

And yet, as the priest’s words rolled out, he had shivered so violently that the worshippers standing either side of him had edged away, as if they supposed him the bearer of some foreign plague.

Were they, in truth, wrong in that judgment?  How many had died for him already? 

Those two gipsies, eyes bulging, yellow and black silk garrottes drawn tight around their necks, dumped by the roadside. 

William, one of his troopers ( _perpetual sniffle, unfaithful wife, no-one more lethal in a scrap at close quarters_ ), sprawled amid bracken, his head half-blown off by a pistol shot, his knife buried to the hilt between the ribs of his last foe: a soldier whose gear bore the unmistakeable stamp of Gondal. 

David, the gage of his lost gamble, supine on the shingle spit at the river’s bend, mouth slack, open eyes expressionless, in death looking younger even than Charis. 

And still the priest rumbled on.

“ _Anyone knowingly giving him help, aid and succour shall face the like penalty, that being exile beyond the realm and outlawry within its borders._ ”

 _Knowingly._ He clung to the word as a drowning man to a spar. By cutting him adrift from rank, fortune, aid and companionship, Mycroft had left him only one option.  

He’d stumbled from the church, made a meal of bread and cheese at the alehouse, and begun an excruciatingly careful cast back to this small, clean, pretty town in the foothills, less than half a day’s ride downstream from the Reaching Beck Bridge.

Whatever Mycroft’s men might later claim, the townsfolk here had known him as Verney the scrivener for the last five years.

A lucky fortune, that. And, he thought with an increasingly elusive flash of humour, of Mycroft’s own doing. Five years ago he’d had no need to adopt a disguise. The whole idea of posing as the stooped, prematurely elderly, widowed Verney – _one daughter married, one son a clerk in the capital, spending a few weeks in the hills for the relief of a persistent, dry cough_ – had been a covert dig at Mycroft. How dare his brother take petty revenge for a minor flare-up in Council by driving him into the wilds to investigate an entirely tedious saga of adultery and arsenic in the castle overhanging the town?  

The whole charade had taken a different turn when Martha Hudson, the widow with whom he was lodging, had come to “Mr Verney” at her wits’ end and poured out the tale of her daughter’s two equally but oppositely unsuitable suitors. It had been quite the prettiest problem he’d seen in a long while; far more ingenious than anything the overfed, overbred pack at the castle could have contrived in a hundred years.

He’d failed to preserve the daughter’s maidenhead – a lost cause from the start, in Sherlock’s private opinion – but had at least recovered the widow’s life-savings. The girl vanished who-knew-where with the plausible, charming, thoroughly vile young man she’d been in cahoots with. The widow, after she’d recovered somewhat from the shock, had gone so far as to opine that the pair of them would probably be adequate punishment for each other. After which she’d cursed herself for not being a proper mother, burst into tears, pulled a bottle of lethal home-distilled plum brandy and two glasses from a cupboard and told him to come back and stay free of charge, whenever his cough troubled him too much down on the plains.

He’d taken her up on the invitation, and made regular spring and autumn stops at the gossipy little town. A fascinating location: for its size it seemed to generate a wholly disproportionate amount of mayhem and intrigue. Recently the press of events had forced him to neglect the place, but now it would be his refuge.

He skirted the crumbling perimeter wall around the ancient church of Sancta Maria inter Prata, from which the town took its name. Almost without conscious thought, his feet turned towards the hidden gap between a pair of leaning houses. Without hesitating, he followed a familiar pattern of twists and turns through the narrow, foot-polished backways. 

A raucous gang of revellers ( _wedding-eve party, bride pregnant, groom wondering if the child’s his, bride’s father ensuring he’s too fuddled to back out at the altar_ ) passed the end of the alley and he pressed himself flat against the stonework of the nearest house. None of them glanced in his direction.

Only once the last ragged notes of their singing had faded on the night breeze did he dare approach her door. The house’s shutters were closed tight, no glint of light showing . He knew her habits, though. She would not have retired so early.

He raised his hand to knock, felt an overwhelming sense of being observed and  froze mid movement. A white owl swooped down from the eaves, shrieking at earsplitting volume. He ducked, throwing up his arm to protect his eyes. The owl swooped and shrieked again. Off-balance and unsighted, he blundered against the door, which  resounded beneath the impact like a drum. So much for discretion!

The shutters of the upstairs window were flung wide. Lamplight spilled out.

“What the –”  Her voice changed. “Mr _Verney_?  Is that you?  Wait just a minute, and I’ll be down to let you in. What have you been doing? Not looking after yourself; I can tell _that_ from here. But where have you been, and showing up at this time of night?  Another quarter turn, and I’d hardly have been decent.”

He looked up at the tiny figure outlined against the lighted square of window. Unexpectedly his throat choked, so he could barely breathe, let alone speak.

“I’m sorry. I was delayed on the road,” he gasped, and was overcome by an entirely unfeigned fit of coughing.

Before a hurriedly unbanked fire, he drank hot spiced ale and let the warm flood of Martha Hudson’s concern wash over him. He even submitted to being wrapped in a warmed lambswool blanket with little more than a token protest.

Every bone in his body seemed to have softened. He had been holding himself rigid in defiance of the world for so long. Now he had permitted himself to relax he could not imagine regaining his own shape again. Fluid, like an octopus creeping along the sea bed, oozing through the tiniest gaps between rocks – 

“Here, let me take that, you’ll spill it.”  

He felt his fingers being gently unwrapped from round the pewter mug.

“I’ll put another blanket over you and make up the fire. Tomorrow I’ll air your old room and make you up a proper bed. But for tonight, you’ll not come to any harm in the chair. Sleep tight, Mr Verney.”


	2. Chapter 2

He woke to the sounds of Mrs Hudson bumbling around the room, singing in a reedy, curiously soothing warble and occasionally breaking off to mutter something like “Sheets?” or “Eggs!”

He knew himself to be awake, but it seemed too much effort to lift his eyelids. His limbs were blocks of lead. Part of his mind reminded him this had happened before, after extremes of physical or mental exertion. During the crisis he existed in a heightened state of alertness, oblivious to fatigue, hunger or any of the other unimportant distractions of corporeal existence. Once the crisis passed, his body would call in all its debts at once.

Another bout of coughing racked his frame. Instantly Mrs Hudson was standing over him, blocking out the light that leaked, pinkly, through his closed eyelids.

“Now, Mr Verney, how long has your cough been so bad?  No, don’t tell me. Men!  Convinced they’re going to die from a splinter one minute, then ignoring the worst signs of illness for months on end. Drink this.”

A strong herbal smell assailed his nostrils. He opened his eyes to find a mug being held to his lips. Obediently, he sipped. It tasted vile but doubtless wouldn’t kill him. Mrs Hudson was a fair empirical herbalist, even if formal medical science was a closed book to her.

“If that doesn’t do the trick, we’ll have to get a physician to take a look at you.”

“Not that – butcher – Philips.” He forced the words out despite the burning agony in his lungs. “Last time, he tried to poultice my chest with a flayed mouse – ” The rest of the sentence was lost to another coughing fit.

“And it would have done you a great deal of good, if you’d not let squeamishness get in the way of good sense. Laid warm against the skin, there’s nothing like it. But you’ve been a stranger to us for over a year. A lot’s changed. Mr Philips, God rest him, took bad at the end of the summer. He sank in two days.”

 _Try his own remedies, did he?_ The Crown Prince would have said it; Mr Verney – more prudent, if no kinder – confined himself to a non-committal grunt. Nonetheless, Mrs Hudson’s eyes were shrewd.

“None of that.” There was a note between reproof and humour in her voice. “Though I could have done with you here, back then. My friend Mrs Turner – she’s in charge of the laundries up at the castle, now – she would have it there was something funny about how he died.”

No matter how exhausted he was, the hint of murder was irresistible. He cocked an eyebrow. “Go on.”

Mrs Hudson pulled out some knitting and settled down into the chair on the other side of the fire. Plainly this was at least a ten row story.

“Well. Mrs Turner told me the old gentleman thought Mr Philips might have been stepping out of his place with the young squire. Wasn’t happy at all, she said. And it’s true, that summer we’d seen more of Mr Ronald down in the village than we ever had before.”

“Mr Ronald” would be Ronald Adair, the owner of the castle. Five years ago, at the time of his father’s murder, he’d been a boy away at school. Sherlock had barely spared him a thought. How old would he be, now? Eighteen?

He made an interrogative noise, encouraging her to continue. 

“Well, who could blame him? We’ve precious few people in the place with any book-learning at all. Small wonder if Mr Ronald came down to play chess with Mr Philips of an evening and talk of natural philosophy and such. And I doubt Mr Ronald’s guardian did like it – the old gentleman’s always been one to stand on his dignity, for all he’s not really one of the Family, and _he’d_ not know natural philosophy from a hole in the ground – but as _you’ll_ know, Mr Verney, he should count himself lucky if that’s the worst trouble a young man of good family gets into, growing up.”

 _David._ For a second his heart raced, before he realised it was doubtless a reference to Mr Verney’s barely satisfactory son, with whose imagined (remembered) exploits he’d fed Mrs Hudson’s curiosity on past visits.

“Indeed,” he croaked. No need to counterfeit feebleness. 

She nodded. “But I told her, ‘It’s a big step from disapproving of something to poisoning and, if Mr Verney were here, he’d tell you so.’ And I wish you had been.”

Sherlock was not sure it would have helped. Perhaps, when the castle’s master had been enduring his slow, agonising death by poison, Mrs Turner had wondered if the soiled linens and sweat-soaked sheets which passed through the castle laundries had a wholly natural origin. That could have shaped her suspicion now.

Not that there was any reason to suppose Francis Maynooth had been complicit in his sister’s crimes. He had been three hundred miles away at the time, holding down a modest official position in the Gaaldine embassy to Glasstown. 

The poisoner, confronted with evidence of her guilt, had cheated the hangman with one of her own brews, so there’d seemed no point in making the true facts public. It was allowed to pass as a natural tragedy: a distraught widow, an “accident” with a sleeping draught. Better for the boy – and the public – never to know the truth.

Maynooth had made an application in due form to assume guardianship of his nephew, and had settled in at the castle to manage the orphan’s estates as if to the manner born.

But now the boy was growing to manhood. Like many before him, he was doubtless chafing at the constraints his guardian placed on him. Small wonder if he started to look for companionship beyond the castle walls.

And now the principal friend he’d found lay in his grave. Coincidence, or something more sinister?

“You’re woolgathering.”  Mrs Hudson poked him with the blunt end of a knitting needle. “If I’m boring you, you’ve only to say.”

“Not boring. Not at all.”  

Buried last summer. People claimed the presence of poison in a corpse slowed the rate of decay, though the empirical evidence was sketchy and contradictory. In any event, Sherlock was a hunted man – strange how he kept forgetting. Really not the time to perform an unsanctioned exhumation. Leave the castle folk to their intrigues and let Mycroft deal with the consequences, should there be any.

Mrs Hudson eyed him.

“Hm. Well. Those sheets should be properly aired, now. How about you go and have a proper lie down, when I’ve made your bed up? The market’s the day after tomorrow; it brings all sorts into town. If you’re not better by then, I’ll see if there’s an apothecary there who can do anything for you.”

He could have said a great deal about the state he’d have to be in before he allowed some peripatetic quack to touch his body. But the thought of a proper bed seemed so seductive that the moment passed. It was only when he was lying down, relishing the feel of cool linen against his skin, that an idea struck him. But it seemed so fanciful that, when he awoke after the longest uninterrupted sleep he’d had for weeks, he reckoned it a dream, and dismissed it out of hand.


	3. Chapter 3

Mrs Hudson – that jewel among women – had lovingly preserved the tools of Mr Verney’s trade at the bottom of a cedarwood trunk, wrapped first in soft leather and then in protective canvas. Precious sticks of dried Indian ink; rarer coloured pigments; his slate, chalk, sanding pot, ruler and penknife and, last and best of all, almost a ream of the best rag paper emerged from the wrappings.

She had even placed a dozen white goose quills on the table below the window which gave the best light.

“Not that you’re to go wearing yourself out,” she warned, eying him suspiciously.

“Just a few practice essays, to get my fingers limber.” 

“Hm.”  She fidgeted, irresolute by the door, dressed in her best for market day. The sounds of a beaten drum and the cries of hucksters drifting in through the open shutters decided her. Life, excitement and movement was flooding into town, and she risked missing it. “Well, don’t overtire yourself. And I’ll be keeping my eyes peeled for someone who might be able to treat that cough, trust me.”

The moment the door shut behind her he reached for the slate. He had carried the instructions in his head for days. The sooner they were consigned to writing the better, before time or death obliterated them. Important to get it right, though, and his resources were no longer so lavish he could afford to waste paper on false starts.

_Whence came it?  Of the old wolf’s last getting._   
_Where should it lie? In the halls of his fathers._

So much for the introduction; now for the meat. 

_Where was the sun?  It swam on the water._

The vast bulk of the central massif to the west cast long shadows along the valleys well before the setting sun sank below the horizon. Only at sunrise did the sun appear to touch the water’s surface, and then only when seen across the rare tranquil stretches on this turbulent mountain river.

_Where was the blossom?  White on the thorn._

Images flooded his mind, more vivid and immediate than they had any right to be. He was back in the river, swirling downstream from the Reaching Beck Bridge, his hands clamped into David’s belt, the roaring waters tumbling and tossing them like dead twigs, the agony in his air-starved lungs bidding to tear his chest asunder.

The current slackened. His head broke the surface; he gulped great lungfuls of air. Pain spiked as his knee collided with some underwater obstacle. He floundered, found his feet, and staggered ashore on a shingle spit, dragging David’s body. A bare glance sufficed to extinguish the last flicker of hope. 

The boy was dead. Most probably, he had been dead before he hit the water. The Pretender had outwitted them both – almost effortlessly, it seemed.

He knelt by the corpse, threw his head back and shouted his rage and frustration to the skies. 

When he lowered his head his eye was caught by the great hawthorn tree on the far side of the river. It sparked some last flicker of defiance. He dragged David’s body back to the water’s edge and then – it was the hardest decision he had ever made – waded into the icy stream himself. Towing the corpse, he struck out towards the further bank, his lodestone that white explosion of blossom.

More pictures swirled through his mind, fast and fragmented.

Making landfall where the river had carved out a hollow in the bank, beneath the roots of a willow tree.

Stripping David naked with brutal efficiency, tying the clothes in a tight bundle, thrusting the body under the overhang. 

Scouting through the underbrush towards the hawthorn tree, praying it had been planted to guard a house threshold – thorns and rowans often were – and thus he might find shelter there.

The jar as his foot collided, hard, against the remains of a perimeter wall, buried beneath creeping foliage. 

Tracking the line of the ruins, coming ever closer to the thorn tree. Here, it was possible to discern more of the building which had once stood here; crumbled walls, part of a byre with a semi-intact roof, and then –

Set into the ground, hard against the remains of the wall, was a weathered slab of dressed stone, a shade under three feet by two, over-grown with brambles. In its very centre was a carving in shallow relief. His fingers traced its outline. 

A Tudor rose, the badge of an extinct Royal house from the far side of Europe.

Someone had passed this way years ago, carrying his own hopes and fears. And he had carved a sign of allegiance and defiance into solid rock, to ensure that something of himself would remain, when his body had long ago mingled with this thin, dry, foreign earth.

_A fugitive. A fellow._

He cleared the brambles away with one sweep of his boot, then knelt to trace round the slab’s cool stone edges. On the northerly of its shorter sides his questing fingertips found what they sought: a deeply indented groove.

He rocked back on his heels. _Where next?_  

Well, he’d won one round by assuming his predecessor had thought like he did. Time for another throw.

Forcing his way through thigh-high nettles and tangled briars he found a half-ruined kitchen range set in a wrecked chimney breast, its iron bars weeping red rust tears onto the stone hearth. At a pinch he might be able to wrest one of those bars free, but his strength was ebbing and, in any event, the end might be too thick to slide into that precisely scooped groove in the slab. He needed – ah. 

There was an alcove in the ruined chimney, behind the fireplace. His hand reached up and captured a sooty, sack-cloth wrapped bundle. He unwrapped it on the hearth. Craftsman’s tools, laid away long ago, first coated in goose-grease and then swathed in oil-soaked linen. Standing proud amid the bunch was a serious-looking iron crow, its flattened end the exact shape of the groove in the slab outside. It might be pitted with rust, but it was undoubtedly the right tool for the job.

With the crow’s leverage he eased the slab sideways, taking care not to damage the brambles, to expose a dark pit below. Then, he felt inside his jerkin for his tinderbox. The tinder, predictably, was sodden. He laid it on the slab to dry in the sun and spread David’s fine linen shirt and undergarments next to it. While they dried, he searched the woods for a branch of suitable thickness to use as a torch.

The overcast morning had ripened to a blazing afternoon; tinder and linens were dry when he returned. He tore David’s under-drawers to strips and wrapped them round the end of the branch. Armed with the makeshift torch he descended, cautiously, into the hole.

He found himself in a capacious, well-constructed cellar, no doubt used for storing wine and oil, when the ruin had been a working farm. Here, too, he saw the hand of the unknown fugitive. Stones had been strategically removed, making a practical ladder for descent and ascent. Better still, a stout stone shelf had been set into the wall about a foot below the opening. A little experimentation showed that it was precisely placed to offer support when one was raising or lowering the slab from within. Whoever had used this place as his refuge had had no intention of being trapped within it.

Sherlock approved.

In feeling around the far end of the cellar, where part of the wall had tumbled, he happened across pure gold. Tucked in a corner was a sealed cask, which vouchsafed encouraging sloshing sounds when tipped on edge and proved to contain rancid olive oil, opaque with standing. Foul as it was, it was a gift of God.

Scouting around took longer than he had expected. When he emerged from the cellar already the shadows were lengthening. He needed to get a move on, before the onset of rigor made it impossible to move David’s body.

Single-handed, weary, the body a literal dead-weight, he found it a beast of a job. Clearly, he had been scandalously under-remunerating the porters and orderlies whom he’d casually required to shift corpses around for his convenience over the years. Even though the ruined farmhouse was barely a hundred yards from the water’s edge it seemed to take forever. More than once he dropped his burden and crouched, heart racing, as some sound or half-glimpsed movement made him fear the pursuers had caught up with them.

They made it, nevertheless, to the cellar. 

There was a hollow in the flagged floor, probably worn by the dripping water of centuries. He filled it from the oil cask, twisted a strip of linen into a makeshift wick and lit it from the last sputtering flicker of his torch. 

He balanced on the shelf and hooked the slab back into place with the iron crow.

Scarcely a moment too soon; as he did so he caught the sound of shouts, barked military orders and bodies forcing their way through the underbrush.

Trapped without hope of stirring while the pursuit swept past, he turned his attention to David. The boy looked heart-breakingly young in the soft lamplight, slumped in a heap like so many officer-cadets Sherlock had seen in his time, worn beyond endurance by their first experience of forced marches and short commons.

No sergeant-at-arms, no matter how stentorian his voice, would ever summon this officer-cadet to parade again.

The cross-bow bolt, striking between the shoulder-blades, had buried itself deep in the boy’s body. Sherlock’s probing finger could just reach its end. No hope of retrieving it and no sense in trying, either. Doubtless Corbisdale’s men were already spreading rumours that he, too, had gone to the rendezvous with a concealed dagger. Showing the boy had been slain from a distance would be a vital preliminary to clearing his name.

Which meant the corpse needed to be collected by the right people.

He carried the body – rigor was advancing, already the face and jaw were stiff – into the partially collapsed corner, and began moving more stones to hide it. Before long his hands were torn and bleeding. He worked on, doggedly. 

His last act, before placing the final stone which would hide the body completely, was to work his own signet ring off his hand and place it on David’s. The boy had, after all, been his close kin. Whoever found him would know he had been claimed by his family at the last.

All that was left then was to wait. Eventually he fell into an uneasy doze. When he awoke, the lamp was out and he knew without shadow of doubt it was time. He emerged from his lair into the grey light of early morning.

Judging by the evidence, at least three different groups of soldiers had passed through in the night. Had he stayed in the open they could not have failed to catch him.

Still, the pursuit had gone, at least for the time being. He stood against the thorn tree, squinting eastwards, towards the sea. 

The sun rose. He noted, almost mechanically, that at sunrise the thorn’s long shadow touched, just, the hearthstone of the ruined chimney. Then he marked the angle of shadow and hearth, and thought again.

Come death, war or treachery he would see his debt to David paid. He would ensure that, even if he lost this throw, when they were all dead and dust someone could find David, know who he had been, and see him restored to lie with his fathers in the Royal Chapel.

He fell to pacing. The sun was well above the horizon by the time he had finished. For the next few days, wandering in the wild, he recited the instructions to himself morning and evening, till at length he wondered if he would ever be free of their echo in his head. 

Now, as he committed them to the slate in Mrs Hudson’s parlour, it felt as if a great weight had been rolled from his back.

_Where was the shadow? Dark on the hearthstone._

_How was it stepped?_   
_North by ten and by ten, east by five and by five, south by two and by two, west by one and by one; all under the rose._   
_Who brings it home? He who –_

He paused, struck by a sudden, unexpectedly painful recollection of sunlight slanting on blond-washed sandy hair, and a forehead crinkled in amused reproof. A swipe of a moistened thumb obliterated the half-written line. In its place he wrote the final couplet.

_Who brings it home? The one who sees clearly._   
_Why must they bring it? For the sake of the land._

He blinked, feeling unutterably weary. Then he reached for the quill.


	4. Chapter 4

“… and I can’t expect the old gentleman will be at all happy about that!” Mrs Hudson finished triumphantly.  

Sherlock blinked. He had been lost in his thoughts, trying to trace a path through the whorls and layers of treachery that encompassed the realm. He had not even heard Mrs Hudson’s return from the market, let alone whatever convoluted narrative she had just delivered herself of.  

His eyes ranged round, looking for some inspiration to shape his response. She had unpacked her basket; a pair of pullets and a bunch of spring greens lay side by side on the scrubbed wood of the table.

 _Pullets._ The respectable poor lived lives so far removed from the grandees of the Court that many saw them as a separate species, incomprehensible save to the specialist student. Once Sherlock had been of similar mind. That, though, had been before he first encountered Sancta Maria inter Prata. Now he could read their rituals and observances as if born to it.  

In this world chickens existed for eggs and, at the end of their egg-laying lives, for broth. To kill chickens young enough to be roasted or poached was an Event; it happened only to mark rites of passage – a son coming of age, a daughter betrothed – or major festivals of the Church.

“Mrs Hudson!” he said, gesturing towards the fowl, raising his eyebrows. To his fascination, she pinked up like a girl at her first dance.  

“Well, and why shouldn’t I treat you? After all, without you, I’d not have it to spend at all, and they don’t put pockets in shrouds.”

By this point in his life Sherlock would never make any categorical statement as to what they put in shrouds; he’d seen too many oddities, ranging from contraptions to prevent the dead walking to equally ingenious devices to allow a prematurely buried body to draw attention to its plight. Nevertheless, he sensed that debating the specific point with Mrs Hudson would be ill-advised. 

“That’s hardly –”

“Besides,” Mrs Hudson interrupted, “Mrs Turner’s coming down to share them – I could hardly avoid asking her, not with that girl of hers with her eyes out on stalks, watching me buy them. Glad of a chance to get out of the castle, I don’t doubt. As I said, the old gentleman hasn’t been in the best of tempers lately. But at least she’ll be able to tell us a bit more about this Colonel Moran who Mr Ronald’s so thick with, having seen him at close quarters, so to speak.”

 _Moran._ The name hit him like a hammer-blow. How had it failed to penetrate his stupor earlier?  And how had he failed to recognise the man’s handiwork when he’d examined David’s body in the cellar?  The bolt had struck precisely between the shoulder-blades, deviating less than a little finger’s width to left or right, and buried itself deeper than any normal weapon should have been able to achieve at that extreme range.

_A weapon specially designed for the job. Its quarry, the noblest game of all._

That being so, who else would the Pretender have asked to take the shot but the finest marksman in all Gondal?  Especially since Moran had been insanely devoted to the Pretender since the latter had been a mere boy.

But if Moran’s presence in a hidden eyrie overlooking the Reaching Beck Bridge was all too explicable, his being in Sancta Maria inter Prata, exercising some sort of unwholesome influence over the young squire, was anything but. The natural urge of an assassin was to leave the scene as quickly and unobtrusively as possible. If Moran had returned, it had to be for a compelling reason.

He tried to make his voice sound no more than ordinarily inquisitive.

“How long did you say that’s been going on, again?”

“Well, that’s the odd thing. This Moran turned up out of nowhere less than a week ago. Been fighting in France – or was it the Rhineland?  Somewhere foreign, anyway. Probably made his own town too hot to hold him. Mrs Turner told me he looked the sort. She’s going to be keeping a watchful eye on her girls. Anyway, he put up at the inn, and it just so chanced that that night Mr Ronald had been out for a walk – he’s a great one for rambling round the district, I doubt there’s a blade of grass within twelve miles of the church he’d not recognise – and stopped at the inn for a mug of ale before going on up to the castle.”

_Saw a strange horse in the inn stable and couldn’t resist the temptation of making the acquaintance of someone from outside his own narrow circle. Predictable. Especially to a man accustomed to stalking and trapping his prey._

“A mug of ale and a game of cards, by any chance?”  

Mrs Hudson looked, for a moment, startled. “Now, that’s uncanny, Mr Verney. How could you have known?”

He shrugged. “I was young and green myself. Once. So I take it Mr Ronald won a bit on the first night; sportingly offered to give Moran his opportunity to take his revenge the next day, ended the second night slightly up again and won an embarrassingly _large_ amount on the third night. Cleaned Moran out, in fact. And, Mr Ronald being a nice boy, and gentlemanly convention not allowing him to forgive Moran his gaming debts, the only decent thing to do would be to offer him bed and board at the castle,  dressed up as some sort of sinecure post.”

Mrs Hudson’s lips were pinched, the customary twinkle missing from her eyes, her brow furrowed. “Listen, Mr Verney; you’ll not come out with anything of that kind before anyone else, will you?  Promise me?  And specially not Mrs Turner.”

He made his voice deliberately nonchalant. “Why not?  Afraid the diocesan examiner will have me taken up as a cunning man?”

“Well, and if he did, I’d not say he’d be wrong. There’s many a one suffered for sorcery on less grounds. But no.”

She took a deep breath. “You’re right about how it happened, and about the job – training the castle garrison, in case we get an incursion across the border over the summer, or so this Moran says.   But you aren’t the first to have hinted that the play fell too pat to be straight. Jem the tavern-keeper tried to have a word with Mr Ronald on the second night, but that fell on deaf ears –”

“The boy was winning. Easy to believe you’re being cheated when the cards run against you. Not the other way.”

Mrs Hudson nodded. “That’s what Jem said. After the third night – well, I met him the morning, after and that wasn’t a happy man, no, not at all. And I believe he’d tried to get into the castle, to say as much, but as I said, the old gentleman’s one to stand on his dignity and if a tavern-keeper turns up saying he has to speak face-to-face, and no, he’s not going to tell any flunkey what his business is with the master, well, he’s going to get sent away with a flea in his ear, isn’t he?”

“And then?”  There had to be a “then”. He knew his Sancta Maria inter Prata. Its winding old streets and picturesque, lime-washed buildings concealed depths of depravity which could tempt the palate of even the most jaded epicure of crime.

Mrs Hudson sucked in her breath and Sherlock recognised, beneath the conventional exterior, something of his own delight in an unfolding mystery.

“A barrel crashed on top of him in his own cellar the next day. Crushed his chest. He lingered a couple of days, but he didn’t know his own family, and I doubt he could have got two words out if he had.”  She leant forward, wagging her finger. “Now, of course everyone’s saying accident, ’cept Theo the potman, who helped him stack the barrels, who says they were as solid as a rock, but then, of course he would, wouldn’t he?  But I don’t like it, Mr Verney. I’ve a good nose, and I say something smells.”

Indeed it did. Moran had found himself a perfect situation. On pretence of “training” he could lead the garrison’s men – and the Adair boy, who possessed such admirably detailed local knowledge – to quarter the countryside for any trace of Sherlock or David. So much was clear. But even Sherlock had not known this was his destination until Mycroft’s proclamation had tipped his hand, by which time Moran had already been spinning his games to entrap the young squire. What could possibly have brought the man _here_?

He coughed, and when the wheezing fit was over looked up at Mrs Hudson. “And did you find a physician in the market?”

She looked regretful. “Not one worthy of the mark. Isaac the German was pulling teeth, as ever – you should have heard the screams – but it’s about all he does do – and I’ve heard all you’ve had to say about the other regulars, too. No, the only new man was the oculist – he was here last week, too – and what would he know about coughs?”

Emotion spiked through him; so sharp he could hardly tell if it was joy or fear. Abruptly he was back in Gondal town, bathed in the after-glow of Shlessinger’s defeat, exchanging lazy wine-shop banter with John about the easiest way to penetrate enemy country in disguise. It had been a purely theoretical question at that point, of course.

“Obvious, isn’t it?”  John’s fair skin had been flushed with wine; the lamplight found unexpected gold glints in his sandy hair. “There are barber-chirugeons in every market in the three kingdoms. Most of them are self-taught bunglers. Easy enough to blend in. No-one would suspect a thing.”

“No.” The point had seemed so obvious that he’d banged his wine-cup down on the table, so hard that John’s head had jerked up in shock.  

“Why not?”

“ _Primum non nocere._ You couldn’t treat a patient with less than your full skill if your life depended on it. The moment you took up the knife you’d betray yourself to be exactly what you are; a physician of the first rank, wanting only experience.”

At the unlikely sound of a compliment on his lips John’s expression had been at once so startled and in its honest confusion so infinitely desirable that Sherlock had almost been undone. Desperate for any inspiration, anything to fill the yawning silence rather than utter his true thoughts ( _Disguise yourself however you might, do you think I’d not know you as my own?_ ) his eye had lighted on a scholar sitting in the wine-shop’s far corner, holding his book at arms’-length and squinting.

“Oculist,” he’d blurted. “You should disguise yourself as an oculist.”

And then he’d had to make up some nonsense about salves and pink-eye and the ease of passing through hostile country with a skill which everyone respected, many needed and vanishingly few understood, all the time fighting against an inner howling emptiness, as if at a chance lost which would never come again. He’d not thought of the moment since save with excruciating embarrassment. In time, that had come to mean that he never thought of it at all. He’d hoped John, similarly, had forgotten.

And yet a travelling oculist had appeared in the town within days of the Reaching Beck Bridge disaster.

John knew of his connection to Sancta Maria inter Prata – he’d been avid in demanding Sherlock recount tales of past investigations. In a lesser man it might have looked like flattery; Sherlock knew better. But John’s very transparency created risks. In seeking for Sherlock he would probably commit every blunder in the book and raise the alarm all along the line. At least, for a tracker as acute and ruthless as Moran. 

He made up his mind. “Mrs Hudson, when I tried my practice drafting this afternoon, I found my eyes dimmed after but a few lines.   I’d not confide this to anyone but you – a scrivener lives by his vision, and if that vision is thought faulty his reputation shrivels – but I could sorely value his expert opinion. Privately. Can you find where he lodges?”

She paused, then nodded. “Yes. I’ll do that. But - ”

Her voice tailed off. Her glance towards the fowl lying on the table spoke volumes.

He smiled; it was the hardest piece of acting he had ever performed. “Tomorrow, indeed, will do. After all, it will be all one to the oculist when he examines me. One patient is much like another, I dare say.”  

The wind changed overnight. Sherlock woke to overcast skies and a wind whistling down from the high slopes, where winter still lingered He lay beneath the goose-feather quilt Mrs Hudson had found for his bed (absurd, the way she persisted in treating him as some fragile bloom) hearing it rattling the bedroom shutters in their frames ( _green wood, fitted too early, warped_. He should have words with the carpenter. How dare people cheat Mrs Hudson, merely because she was a widow with no man to watch over her interests?)

So. Today he would _know_.

He dressed with more than his usual care. As he donned each layer he sank deeper and deeper into Verney’s skin. Moran was out there, somewhere in the little town, waiting for him to make a mistake. Perhaps – who knew? – his mistake had already been made.  

He had hoped that John, being ignorant of his intentions, could not be comprised in his ruin. Even that hope, though, had been put to flight by Mycroft’s proclamation. _Exile beyond the realm and outlawry within its borders._ How – precise. How damnably precise. John had already taken voluntary exile from Gondal for Charis’ sake. Now, if he stood by Sherlock, he faced a second exile, not just from Gaaldine but from Charis, too.

How cruel of Mycroft, to force John to such a dilemma.  

How foolish of Sherlock, not to anticipate that cruelty.  

And who had John chosen, when put to it?

Mrs Hudson was out, something to be grateful for. He put the final touches to his disguise in her parlour, swathing neck and lower face with a scarf, pulling his hat down over his brows, at a rustic angle which would make any man the laughing-stock of the capital. He closed his eyes for a second, reaching deep inside himself. _Verney._

Then he opened the door and stepped out into driving rain.


	5. Chapter 5

The oculist lodged in a converted feed loft above the better of the town’s two livery stables. The thick stone walls struck chill as Sherlock climbed the narrow stair, but doubtless the place would be warmer at night, when the beasts were stabled below. 

He drew a deep breath and knocked on the door. 

The five steps he heard echoing across the floorboards on the far side of the flimsy door told him all he needed. _Not a limp – more of a hesitation in his walk. Lingering traces of an honourable wound._

He drew down his hat still further. _Verney._

The door opened. 

“Ah, Mr Verney? I had a message to expect your call.” 

The warm, familiar, concerned tones flooded his ears, paralysing, for a moment, all other senses. He could only nod by way of response. 

John’s unassuming, dear features crumpled in puzzlement – he was doubtless wondering if his patient combined dumbness or idiocy with his supposed eye problems. Still, the physician in him rallied.

“Well, then, by all means come in, and let me examine you.”

The room was even sparser than Sherlock had feared: a straw palliasse in the corner, blankets folded with military precision; a rough chest in the corner on which rested a jug and basin in battered pewter; a worn military satchel, presumably containing spare clothes. The only item out of the ordinary was a crystal globe filled with water, suspended from a stand on the window-ledge. John beckoned him to stand by it.

“Over here, sir. That’s right.” He turned aside, reaching into the chest. His voice came muffled from its depths. “A moment while I light candles. We need a good light and it’s a dreadful morning.”

Sherlock let hat and scarf fall to the ground.

“You think so? It’s the best morning I’ve had in weeks.”

John spun round. His mouth was open. Sherlock made three strides across the room and covered it with his own, acutely conscious of every last detail ( _Sweat on his brow, strong scent of oil of valerian – not used in eye treatment, must be sleeping badly – breathing erratic, colour elevated, heart thumping as if after a chase in armour –_ )

“Oh, God, _you_ – ” John gasped, surfacing momentarily. His grip round Sherlock’s body was so tight that for a moment Sherlock wondered if he was seeking support against a threatened swoon. But his tongue – eager and agile in his mouth – and the hard pressure of his arousal against him belied any such suspicion. This was not the brotherly greeting of comrades in arms, united after divers perils. It was all he had hoped and longed for since John had emerged out of the melee in a star-hung pass above Gaaldine.

He reached up and tangled his fingers in John’s hair. “You came looking for me.” He had never uttered a more delightful sentence. All of poetry, natural philosophy, deduction paled into insignificance besides them. _When asked to choose, you chose me. When everyone in the land had been commanded from the market-cross and the pulpit to shun me, you came looking for me._

“What else could I do?” John paused. _Too long a pause. Something not quite right._ The chill Sherlock felt had naught to do with the cold stone of the feed-loft.

“ _What_?” It came out needlessly harsh, almost accusing.  

John looked startled, as if at a blow. “I would have come in any event, but in fact I had no choice. It was my Queen’s command.”

“Go on.”

“Charis knew you were missing, before the King heard it. You’d sent her instructions in her name as Queen of Gondal. She – she inferred that you intended her to act as such. She did.”

John’s honest eyes were clouded; his brow furrowed. Sherlock dropped his hand.

_Not good, not good at all. He’s in two minds; mustn’t let him feel compelled. No power on Earth or under it will shake him once he makes a stand on a moral question. Keep him from deciding. Keep talking. About anything, no matter what._

“I used that phrase for Mycroft’s benefit. One way or another, doubtless he’s seen the letter by now. I knew he would. I thought – well, as you know he doesn’t have a great regard for me, except occasionally, as a means to an end.”

Mercifully, John didn’t attempt to remonstrate. “So?”

“If he thinks of her as the Crown Princess of Gaaldine – that renders her merely an encumbrance to an irrelevance.”  

Was it imagination, or had John given a sharp, contradicting intake of breath? No matter: Mycroft’s opinion of him was a profound truth, and if John couldn’t see it – 

He avoided taking that thought to its obvious conclusion – a technique that had served him well over the years. “‘The Queen of Gondal’, on the other hand – those are words of power. And Mycroft does so worship power.”  

Odd, how something which struck him now as blindingly obvious had eluded his notice for so many years. He had to swallow, twice, before he could continue. 

“It’s lucky our uncle died when he did. Five years was almost too long for Mycroft to be the power behind the throne. It’s a role that fits him too well. He needs to know what it feels like to look into the eyes of those whom he has destroyed. For him to appreciate that they know exactly whom to blame and will take that knowledge to their deaths.”  

He felt John’s hand reach up to cradle the nape of his neck, pulling his lips down to his own, brushing them in the gentlest of kisses.

“Don’t be afraid. You aren’t like that. That isn’t you. You’ve no plans to be the power behind the throne in Gondal. You want it for her. I trust you.”

He could hardly tell whether the touch or the words did more to warm him. Either way, they made speech possible.

“Tell me what Charis said?”

For a moment, John looked perplexed. “That I was a subject of Gondal, not Gaaldine, that I’d been appointed by the last legitimately anointed ruler of Gondal; King Ambrosine hadn’t revoked the appointment, she _wouldn’t_ revoke the appointment and no-one recognised the Pretender anyway. So if Mycroft tried to obstruct me, he’d no authority to do so. But – didn’t you tell her what to say?”

“Of course not.” Joy burst on him, exploding across the night like shooting stars or fireworks. “All her own idea. But – I never expected her to have the wit.”  

He’d not had the wit himself, that was the truth of it. His overly analytical mind could never have conceived the brilliant simplicity by which Charis, Queen of Gondal ordered the only subject currently at her command, one John Watson, Queen’s Physician, to go and find her missing husband. And be hanged to any contrary instructions uttered by her good brother the King of Gaaldine.

Sherlock pictured Mycroft’s face when he realised he had been outmanoeuvred, and all but laughed out loud.  

Not, of course, that Charis’ protection could cover John where Sherlock intended to take them. On that point the law ran the same both sides of the border, and on neither kindly. Sometimes, in dreams, he found himself back in the Bishop’s dungeons, breathing the foetid stench of despair; he could almost smell it now. He bit down hard on his lower lip, bringing himself forcibly back to the present.

_Whatever risks we run, it’s worth it._

“You’ve been away again.” Extraordinary how tender John’s voice could sound. “I could tell from your eyes. Now you’re back – you do realise how impossible this is? I’m sorry – I shouldn’t have done what I did when I saw you. But – I thought you were _dead_ , Sherlock. I’d searched both banks of the river, down to two days ride from the bridge, on either bank, and found no traces of you.”

 _Only because you did not observe._ Not the moment to say it. He held his breath, willing John to reach the obvious conclusion. _Think how you felt when you thought I was dead. Feel it. Taste it. And then still have the nerve to make me dead to you._

Perhaps something of that was passing through John’s mind; he shifted his weight from foot to foot, perceptibly ill-at-ease.

“When you revealed yourself, it was so sudden that I – well. Let’s not talk about it. Better forgotten, eh? Tell me you understand.”

“ _No._ ” Desperation gave the monosyllable all the authority at his command. John jerked away, his face showing naked shock and – something else. Something that Sherlock must remember, for when they got past this moment. If they got past this moment.

“Listen.” He pulled him down, so they were sitting side by side on the palliasse. His hands encircled John’s wrists. John grunted, but acquiesced. Sherlock summoned every last ounce of conviction into his voice and expression.

“I am pledged – mind, body and honour – to spend all I have and am to give Charis a kingdom. Two kingdoms, if Mycroft doesn’t get himself organised enough to produce legitimate heirs now he has the chance. But what I cannot give her – John, what I have _never_ been able to give her – is an undivided heart. And that remains true no matter what happens here, between us.”

He tightened his grip as John stirred, restively. “No. Hear me out. I love you. I want you.” He hesitated for a moment, then forced himself to go on, though his throat swelled and almost choked him. “I _need_ you. I cannot defeat the Pretender – I cannot win Gondal for its rightful Queen – without you. Deny me, and you risk denying Charis her birthright.”

“Oh, twisty.” Was it only Sherlock’s treacherous imagination that put a glint of humour into John’s expression? “You devious, underhand, unscrupulous _bastard_.”

He gulped. “Well, yes. Didn’t you ever read Plato? ‘The presence of the beloved does not change the lover; instead it allows both lover and beloved to become most truly himself.’”

John raised his eyebrows. “It seems I was wise to stick to Galen. Though I can’t say that sounds exactly like –”

“Paraphrase. Look, get this into your head. I have loved you for over half my life. I cannot imagine ceasing to do so until my life’s end.”

“However soon that comes. Don’t think I haven’t noticed that cough.”

_Order me to strip so you can examine my chest for yourself, why don’t you?_

His real desperation felt raw in his throat – odd, how like it sounded to the counterfeits he had used to such effect over the years.  

Sherlock ploughed on. “If you deny my body, it does not make my heart and mind any less yours. Or any more Charis’, for that matter. All you will succeed in is making us both unhappy.” He paused, considering. “No. Not both. All three of us.”

That seemed to get through. John half-turned away. “Time. I need _time_ , damn it.”

His breath caught in his throat. _Still a hope._ He nodded. “All the time you need.”

“I should like to walk up and down outside and think it over.”

 _But it’s raining._ A stupid response; he dismissed it unuttered.

“Of course.” He hesitated, in two minds about mentioning Moran. _Be on your guard, my love._ Before he could decide, a fusillade of knocks sounded from the street door, and then a stentorian shout.  

“Open up! We’re from the castle, we’ve urgent need of an oculist – is he within?”

John turned. “They mustn’t find you. Here.” He swept aside jug and basin, and lifted the lid of the chest. The sparse few items inside barely covered the chest bottom. Sherlock’s eye lingered for a second on Verney’s discarded trappings, but John caught him round the shoulders and pushed. “No time. In. Now.”

He folded himself into the tiny space, John dropped coat and scarf over him and lowered the lid. He heard the clink as jug and basin assumed their previous positions, and John’s raised voice. “Come in, sirs. I am at your disposal.” And then the tramp of booted feet – five, no, six pairs – on the staircase.

The chest, thankfully, was ill-constructed; air, though not much, leaked in. The valerian smelled far stronger here, mixed with a pungent gallimaufry of other essences, confused to the point of nausea. Something – a salve pot, judging by the shape – was digging into his left shoulder-blade. He could neither reach to remove it nor roll away.

“What’s happened?” John’s voice, muffled by the chest, addressing the visitors.

“Accident, sir.” The captain of the castle garrison, his gruff voice unmistakeable. A good enough soldier in his day, somewhat inclined to coast, not a man to make trouble – and hence work – by asking awkward questions. “Lord Francis Maynooth. Something splashed right into his eye. Looks bad.”

“Something?” John’s voice was fainter; he must be over by the door, doubtless reaching for his outer garments.

“From some sort of alchemical experiment, sir. You know how the gentry are.” 

_An alchemical accident? To a man who, according to Mrs Hudson, couldn’t tell natural philosophy from a hole in the ground?_

He choked back his instinctive urge to shout a warning. Six against two, and the six armed. Not even six against two. Folding his six foot frame from a space half that length was no joke; they’d have John pinioned before Sherlock could be out of his hiding place.  

 John’s voice, assured and decisive. “Well, let’s be going. No time to waste if I’m to have a chance saving that eye.”

_Oh, John. A physician to the core. And the best man I have ever known._

The door slammed to. Very cautiously Sherlock pushed up the chest lid. Bowl and jug clanged on the floor; he let them lie. Pausing only long enough to reassume Verney’s outer clothes and to check the soldiers had left no sentry behind, he made his own exit from the feed loft, heart thumping, bile churning in his mouth.

_Moran, be assured. You will pay for this. To your last drop of blood and twitching nerve end._


	6. Chapter 6

The livery stable backed onto the inn-yard, doubtless a mutually profitable business arrangement for their respective proprietors ( _officially cousins; unofficially but in all too obvious fact half-brothers_.) 

Lest anyone had been left sentry over the stable, Sherlock avoided the main exit and ducked through a small postern in the wall that divided the two establishments. People rarely marked anyone’s comings or goings from inns.  

Then, to the castle. _Would John be already there? Hardly, unless he and the soldiers ran. Medical emergency, even if fake. They’ll have run. Neat. A ruse tailored to John’s conscience. And once in the castle he’ll be Moran’s bait, his tethered goat._

Lost in thought, he reacted a second too slowly when a shambling figure stretched a long arm out from an outbuilding’s entrance, caught and twisted the back of his collar. Breaking the hold would cost his assailant a shattered wrist and destroy forever his pose as the delicate, bookish Verney.  

_And so give Moran what he wants._

He caught a whiff of roasted barley malt. Fighting suddenly ceased to be an option. Without turning round, he said, “Master Theo, be assured you have my full attention. I do not propose to run away.”

The hand on his collar dropped away. A guttural voice muttered, “She warned me you was uncanny.”

He faced the potman. “No; I just keep my eyes open. When did you speak to Mrs Hudson?”

Theo’s face went slack. The town supposed him to be “lacking”, but Sherlock suspected that beneath his rude exterior the potman possessed considerable native cunning, allied to a laziness which bordered on the pathological. Nevertheless, Sherlock should have remembered that Theo closed up like an oyster when confronted with a direct question.  

He forced his body into a pose of perfect stillness, like a river fisherman watching an eel-trap. “Not less than one or more than two turns ago this morning. She came to tell the oculist to expect me, _then_ let you know I’d be along. Clever, to assume I’d cut through here.”

Theo’s frog-like mouth curled in a crafty grin. “Good business for an inn, having a physician or suchlike nearby. Those that visit him, they get good news or they get bad. Either sort goes better with ale.”

“More of a philosopher than many in the capital. As is Mrs Hudson.” 

“What I saw been worrying me. Always used to go to Ma Hudson, when I was little and in trouble. All us kids did.”

“Wise. Also to take her advice to consult me.” 

“Had to. Who else could I trust?”  He pointed towards the cellar door. “Those barrels were as solid as the church tower. I’d swear it on anything you like.”

“So Mrs Hudson said.” 

Fortunately, Theo was not the type to go looking for ambiguities. He nodded, vigorously. “Something wrong. I smelt it. And then I minded the little fellow. He’d been in the corner of the bar that night.”

Sherlock leant forward. No-one had mentioned another man. 

“I shouldn’t suppose anyone else spotted him, with their eyes on Mr Ronald and him about to clean out Colonel Moran. A big win distracts everyone.”

Theo shook his head, vehemently. “No. Not the third night. It was the night before. Jem took Mr Ronald on one side to warn him about the play, when I was changing the barrel. I’d rolled the empty one out the back, and I saw the little man come out of the side door into the yard, past where Jem and Mr Ronald were talking.”

“Wrong door. The jakes are on the other side of the inn.” He paused. “Though I suppose a stranger might have been confused.”

“Not quite a stranger. Been here before, once or twice. Shabby robes and a funny way of talking. Scholar, maybe. Bit of a manner on him, know what I mean?  Like he was sneering at everyone behind his sleeve.”

Likely true of any scholar who blundered into Sancta Maria inter Prata. Five years ago, doubtless they’d have said the same of Verney, the scrivener.

“There’s many like that.”

“True enough. Not the sort you’d recognise in a crowd.” Theo put his finger on his lips. “Though I mind one trick he had. When he was watching, like when he was watching the play, and later, when he was watching Jem and Mr Ronald, he moved his head from side to side a bit. Put you in mind of a weasel watching a rabbit.”

_Holy Virgin._

 “Half a lifetime,” he’d said to John. In years that was true. Times like today, though, it was if he was fifteen again, back in Gondal. He crouched concealed within a closet in the upstairs room of an inn, his eye pressed to a knot-hole, witness to a scene which would mean his death were he to be detected.

_On the eve of exile the Heir of Gondal says farewell to his loyal followers and bids them keep the faith._

“Like this, perhaps.” 

He counterfeited the movement. Theo stared for a second, then stumbled backwards, crossing himself.

“The very spit of it. You – you know the man?”

“You’ll never meet one more deadly.” Not even if Mycroft hauled the potman in for personal questioning. An outcome which was by no means impossible, especially if the dice today fell awry.  

Theo’s face crumpled. “I was _that_ close to him.”  A thought struck him and he brightened. “Not that he saw me.”

“No?”  _Though in support of your argument, you are still alive._

“Well, you know how it is, sir.” The potman blew his nose on his fingers. “He saw me but he didn’t _see_ me. Who notices the potman in the inn-yard, eh, sir?”

Again, a surprisingly profound insight, especially given its source. Though Sherlock imagined Theo had devoted sufficient time to the art of hiding in plain sight when work needed doing to have become a finished master of the art. 

That insight stirred the ghost of an idea. 

Before, however, he could formulate a plan there came the sound of hurrying footsteps. Theo thrust him through the archway into a storeroom. Then he leaned across the archway.   Sherlock retreated into the gloom of the storeroom, stubbed his toe on a loosely-tied bundle of barrel staves and barely suppressed an oath.

“Oh, I do hope I’m in time.”  Mrs Hudson’s voice sounded outside. “Theo, I’m looking –”

Sherlock moved forward soundlessly, ducking his head so his face would appear under Theo’s arm. He put a warning finger to his lips.

Mrs Hudson barely paused. “I’m looking for Catherine. I’ve a bowl of best chicken dripping for her, since she helped me out with those honeycakes last baking day. My hip’s playing me up something cruel; it’s always the damp that gets to it. I’ll just sit on this barrel under the overhang of the eaves while you run and find her, there’s a good boy.”

Another man might have wriggled out of it – though Sherlock would have been hard pressed to name more than half a dozen men he thought were up to it. Theo never stood a chance. He made a mumbled protest; Mrs Hudson raised her eyebrows and he shambled off through the back door of the inn kitchen, muttering to himself.

“Come in here,” Sherlock said, his voice little louder than a whisper. “Some of the castle guard may still be about.”

“Oh, so you’ve heard?”  With surprising agility Mrs Hudson hopped down from the barrel. “I had it from Mrs Turner who got it from that red-headed laundry-maid of hers who’s walking out with her niece’s lad Tommy Evans.”

Sherlock felt a brief flash of hope. Moran might be the greatest hunter and tracker Gondal had produced in generations, but the power of the matrons of Sancta Maria inter Prata and their legendary gossip network was, surely, something even he had not calculated for.

“And Tommy Evans let slip what?”

“Mr Verney, you must have guessed. That the oculist is a spy of Gondal, surely.”

“Absurd!”  He’d spoken a little too warmly; Mrs Hudson shot him a very beady look.

“Would that be so, Mr Verney?  I take it you have private knowledge on the subject?  Might you have met him before?”

He could have lied. But there was something about the shrewd glint in Mrs Hudson’s eye that suggested she might be harder to convince than many. And, for that matter, he owed her much already. Honesty was the least of his debts.

“Yes,” he muttered. “He’s an old friend.”

Unexpectedly, she smiled; a small, sad and secret smile. “Ah. I always wondered.”

His eyes opened wide. “What?”

“Mr Verney, you may think you’ve fooled me all these years, but I was a married woman with a son of my own – God rest him these twenty years – before you’d left the nursery, and _that’s_ assuming you have the years you claim.”

Mrs Hudson’s voice was gentle, but had an edge to it. It reminded him – absurdly – of Genia, back before the cloud had fallen over her. And then his heart suddenly caught up with his ears and began thudding erratically, out of control.

_John. She guesses about me and John. Even if I hoick him out of the castle, she can still destroy us both before the Bishop._

She folded her arms, looking at him as if he were a particularly dense child – or, perhaps, Theo.

“Perhaps, Mr Verney, it’d be as well if we continued this conversation behind a bolted door?  That is, in my home?”

“I don’t have time–”

 “You can’t scale a castle wall by yourself, Mr Verney, and I can assure you that I’ve gone in and out of the castle all my life, and never once through the great gates ’cept on festivals and holy days. Hudson, wherever he lies now, used to be the assistant quartermaster and her then ladyship didn’t care to have the garrison fraternising with the village girls.”

“So you – found ways of getting in to see him?”

“I did. And he found ways of getting out to me. Which won’t surprise you. Since it appears you know rather better than you’ve been letting on all these years, you’ve as much chance of damming the Reaching Beck and making the water run back upstream as you have of stopping two young people who _want_ to be together, from _being_ together.”

“Being executed as a Gondalian spy might do that trick.”

Mrs Hudson snorted. “Now, there you are. Clearly you aren’t thinking straight. Mr Ronald won’t be of age until two years come Michaelmas, if we all live that long. It’s the old gentleman who exercises the King’s commission in these parts, and, Mr Verney, you’ve been coming here for how long, now?  The old gentleman would put on state merely to intimidate a poacher. Heaven alone knows what he’ll do when it’s a suspected Gondalian spy. He’ll be dithering about whether he’s showing too much or too little marten fur to create the right impression, and whether news of his doings will get back to Court – and then planning his outfit in case it does, and the King’s spies have a critical eye for fabric. You’ve hours yet; don’t spoil all by overhaste, as my mother, God rest her, used to tell me when I was a young thing she was teaching to cook.”

Despite himself, despite everything that had happened, Sherlock choked out a short, unexpected laugh. Mrs Hudson smiled.

“ _That’s_ better. Let’s you get back home. You’ll be all the better for a mug of hot spiced ale, and a bit of space to think. Now. I’m a respectable widow, me, and I’m not going to be seen coming out of a tavern. So we’ll leave the way we came in. Oh, don’t worry. No-one’s watching that route. My eyes may be old, but they aren’t failing. And nor are yours, Mr Verney.”

He blinked at her; she laughed.

“You left a pitiful example of trailing writing on the slate for me to find this morning. The oculist was quite shocked when I showed him; spoke Greek and all sorts.”

“But?”  

“I know how many quills I left, Mr Verney. A round dozen. And there were but ten when I returned. If your poor eyes were so bad when working with slate, why move on to wasting paper, a careful man like you?”

And with that final salvo she caught his elbow and steered him out of the inn-yard through into the postern. Amid all the jumble of thoughts which swirled around his mind one came uppermost.

_Moran may not be the only one to have underestimated the ladies of Sancta Maria inter Prata._


	7. Chapter 7

As Ronald Adair’s hand went to the bell-pull to summon his manservant, Sherlock stepped out from his place of concealment behind the bed-hangings. “Don’t,” he said. “I crave but one quarter turn of your time. Alone. What I have to say touches most nearly on your own honour, your family’s position and the safety of the realm.”

 Adair’s hand dropped to his side. He turned to face Sherlock, face drained of colour but his hand commendably steady.

“How did you get in here?”

He gave a short, unequivocal jab of his chin towards the bed. “The same way as your fresh sheets. That is, by way of the castle laundries and a strategically deployed linen hamper.”

“Mr Verney!  This intrusion is an outrage and you are a trespasser.”

“You, on the other hand, are a patriot.” The boy’s mouth opened; Sherlock raised his hand to forestall him. “If you plan to continue as a gamester, you should take more care to guard your countenance. The threat to your honour offended you: that to your position alarmed you. It was, however, the threat to the realm which informed your actions. A fact which may yet save us all.”

“Save us?  From what?”

Before answering, Sherlock walked to the stand beside the bed, reversed the sandglass which stood there, and then crossed the room so that he stood between Adair and the door. The boy eyed his position, but said nothing.  

“I said a quarter turn, and I am a man of my word. In any event, time is not on our side. Your uncle is, relatively soon, going to examine a man whom your soldiers have entrapped and brought here by a base subterfuge.”

“A base subterfuge? Against a Gondalian spy?”

“Against a man who, in all innocence, entered this castle on a mission of mercy, motivated by nothing more than his belief that your uncle’s sight and – perhaps – life depended on the urgent exercise of his skill.”  

The boy’s chin dropped. “I did ask if there wasn’t another way, but Colonel Moran – Colonel Moran said –”

“He said that it was a _ruse de guerre_ and  implied – subtly, but nonetheless unmistakably – that it was not for an untried boy to question a seasoned captain as to what were lawful tactics in such a case.” He made an impatient gesture with his hand. “Oh, don’t look like that. I neither overheard him nor divined his words by necromancy. What else could he have said to justify it? Nevertheless, his manoeuvre was a base one.” _Brilliantly conceived and economically executed_ , part of his mind supplied grudgingly. 

“You named me a patriot, a few moments ago,” Adair said. “Surely, in a case of this nature, when the safety of the realm is in jeopardy, scruples must needs be set aside?”

Sherlock looked steadily at him until the boy dropped his gaze. 

“A realm that jettisoned its customary niceties in the name of survival would shortly cease to be the same realm. The essence of a kingdom does not lie within an outline drawn on a map.”

The boy drew himself up. Every line of his face bespoke cold hauteur. “A realm where small town scriveners presume to lecture their betters on such matters seems, already, to have lost a great part of its essence.”

Sherlock made a harsh, impatient noise at the back of his throat. “Oh, do grow up. And stop wasting time. Do you seriously think I would use this tone to you were I only a small town scrivener, as you put it?  Though you would do well not to underestimate small towns, nor those that dwell there. That lesson I learned the hard way.”

“Who are you, then?”

_A harder question to answer than it seems. Not the man who left Court a month ago, assuredly._

The tattered paper fluttering from the church door put weights on his tongue. He chose his next words with extreme care.

“I _am_ Mr Verney, but he is not wholly me. And there is more to Mr Verney than you imagine.” He paused, and added very deliberately, “I am the man who bore the King’s commission, five years ago, when I arrived here charged with investigating your late father’s last illness.”

The sudden greenish tinge to the boy’s already pale cheek gave him the answer to a question which he had considered, on and off, over the years. 

“Servants’ rumours, or your own suspicions?”

“What?”

“As to your parents’ deaths.” 

“My father died of a slow, chronic decline and my mother – ” Adair trembled to a stop.

“Let us leave your mother’s death to one side for the moment. Her suicide, as we both know, has been an open secret in the town since it happened. The accident story is nothing but a fig-leaf for decency’s sake. No, don’t interrupt me. The time for niceties has long flown. Concentrate on your father’s death. So you have, indeed, wondered?”

The boy gave a sharp, bitten-off sound of pain. His eyes were showing too much white, like a horse in a thunderstorm. His voice, when it came, was an agonised whisper. “There was something wrong, that last time I stayed in the holidays. Things had – changed. Mama – she was distant, the servants whispered in corners, and Papa – he confided something to me, once, when he fancied himself unobserved – I thought it the dark fancy of an invalid, God forgive me!”

He dropped his head in his hands. Sherlock averted his head, so the boy might recover his composure unobserved. No-one had ever accused him of sentiment, but John’s survival depended on the boy’s goodwill. Men, he had found, put disproportionate store in small acts of courtesy.

After a moment or so Adair looked up. There were taut lines around his finely shaped mouth. “You say you came here with the King’s commission. Did you execute it?”

For a moment the boy’s meaning escaped him. Then he understood.  

_Dear God, do the people think us Zeus, wielding thunderbolts?_

“The King’s justice extends only to the living. Not beyond the grave. And I am his investigator only, not his headsman.”  

With unaccustomed gentleness, he added, “My report lies sealed in the Royal archives, away from prying eyes. I doubt the King’s clerks will refuse your application to read it, should you apply. For the moment, though, time is short. There _is_ a spy of Gondal in the castle, though he’s not the man you think.”

The boy swallowed. “Do you mean –”

“Let be for the moment. Your uncle is about to question the oculist. Is there a place from which I can listen unseen?”

After a short pause – _thank the Virgin for the pliable nature of young minds_ – Adair nodded.  

“Follow me. I don’t claim to believe you, but for what happened, back then, you deserve _one_ chance. But – you are in a castle, and every guard here is one of my men. Don’t think to leave here as easily as you entered.”

He inclined his head. “Understood. And for my part, I lay no charge on you. Only listen, learn, and use your own judgement.”

Thankfully,  Adair nodded. 

“I will do as you ask.”

He allowed himself to be taken up to the high place with its incomparable view down onto the audience space. He compressed his tall frame to fit within the lurking chamber, where it had amused so many of the castle’s masters to lie before. He even lay there in silence when John’s small, foreshortened figure, weighed down by shackles, was led forth before the equally short black figure of Francis Maynooth, enshrined in his chair of state on a dais at the end of the hall.

No-one could ever tell how hard it bit. To his dying day he would hear those thin, fluting, questioning tones.

“So,  what kind of man are you?  And what brings you into Sancta Maria Inter Prata?”

John’s voice came clearly up from the floor below.

“I came here to practise my profession. Indeed, I entered this castle for that very reason.”

“Your – profession.” Maynooth made the last word a sneer, though Sherlock judged that he would have done the same to anyone obliged to work with hand or brain. “Well, profess this. Repeat after me: _Sinuous snake sliding/through misty morning sea-stones/Green as the June grass._ ”

That old chestnut!  Just the sort of thing an idiot like Maynooth would think was clever. Gaaldine and Gondalian were sister tongues, differing little between each other. But the Northern language was far harsher, more guttural, compared to the sibilance of the Southern. Legend held that a man, under pressure, always reverted to the dialect he had learned in childhood, making imposture impossible.

In his own case, Sherlock knew, legend spoke false. But in John’s?

“You’ve brought me here to play at word-games?”  John’s air of polite puzzlement tinged with offended dignity was beautifully done. 

“I’ve brought you here to condemn or save yourself out of your own mouth.”

“By reciting your shibboleth? But a cultured man such as yourself must appreciate its imprecision?  So close to the border, I’d wager one in five of men in this room would have trouble pronouncing that, maybe more.” John might have been discussing some arcane point of philosophy, not arguing for his life.

“What –?” Francis Maynooth sounded momentarily bewildered. Sherlock tensed in his lair. If the old gentleman realised he was losing control of the interrogation his reaction would doubtless be violent.

“Uncle.” Ronald Adair’s voice cut in, assured and yet still respectful. “A word.”

He bent and whispered in the old gentleman’s ear. After a moment, Maynooth nodded.

“Go ahead. It should be a salutary demonstration.” He turned and glared at John.

“My nephew has proposed we take you up on your suggestion. Five men here present will essay the same test, thus demonstrating its validity. Ronald, make your selection.”

Adair nodded to the captain of the guard. “My uncle has already shown the correct pronunciation. Four more needed only. Johannes, will you go next?”

“Aye, sir.” The captain of the guard drew himself up and rattled off the verse with aplomb.  

“Splendid. Nominate one of your men, Johannes, to follow.”

The captain called someone from the back row – Sherlock couldn’t catch his name, but from the ripple of amusement which ran round the hall he must be the castle buffoon. He stumbled through the verse with many backtracks and errors, but with, nonetheless, an impeccably Gaaldinian stress on his sibilants.

Adair turned to John.  

“Your wager seems a little optimistic, wouldn’t you say?”

“Perhaps.” John’s voice seemed almost indecently light-hearted, though Sherlock’s acute ear could identify the tension beneath it. “Two more opportunities, though.”

“Well, it’s my turn, then. Or – no – on second thoughts maybe I should bring up the rear. Colonel Moran, how about you?”

The blood thundered in Sherlock’s ears. The boy must be more acute than he looked. Either that or he was taking revenge for Moran’s earlier presumption.

A pause, which threatened to become overlong, and then a merry laugh.

“Ah!   Our oculist may have drawn a bow at a venture, but even random arrows sometimes find their mark.” Moran, for the first time stepped out into Sherlock’s field of view, so he stood besides John, perhaps four feet  away. Neither man gave the smallest sign of having recognised the other.

Moran looked up at Maynooth on the dais, his shoulders fearlessly back.  

_An honest soldier, without a particle of guile in his makeup._

“My lord, that shibboleth has threatened to overset me more than once in my military career. Whether the fault lies in some trifling defect in my palate, or – as my lady mother was inclined to lament, her injudicious selection of a Gondalian girl as my wet-nurse and foster mother, I’m afraid I should make a shocking hash of it. For what it’s worth, your prisoner may consider himself to have made his point.”

“For what it’s worth.” Francis Maynooth seemed to be clinging on to the words like a man in deep snow clutching his staff. He glared at John. “And what is it worth?  Are you a man of Gondal or not, hey?”

“Gondal gave me birth, true.” The words fell into a suddenly silent hall. “But Gondal no longer welcomes me.”

“Ah. And why would that be?” Contempt dripped from Maynooth’s voice.  

Even from a distance, even from only seeing the back of John’s head, Sherlock knew what Maynooth would be confronting: the direct blue gaze of utter integrity.

“Because I adhere to the Modernist party. That is, those of us – and we are not few – who believe that Gondal’s bar on inheritance of the throne through the female line sets us at odds with the greater part of enlightened Europe.”

John paused. There was nothing of the orator about him; his words were simple and unpolished. Nevertheless, there was complete silence in the hall.

“It was, during King Ambrosine’s reign, an entirely – respectable – movement. Our objectives were known, our methods moderate and our meetings open to all those in sympathy who wished to attend.” His voice lifted; Sherlock’s pictured his smile. “These days, I doubt they enjoy such tolerance from the Palace. It certainly became clear to me that if I wished to continue to enjoy good health, it would be advisable to move South of the border before James of Gondal reached the throne.”

“You can hardly expect us to believe the word of one who – on his own story – is wanted for stirring sedition in his own land,” Maynooth sneered.

“Even where the objective of such _sedition_ is to press the claim of your own Crown Princess to the throne of Gondal?”

Dead silence. Then, Ronald Adair’s voice.

“Such claims can hardly be tested here. Do you know of anyone who could vouch for you in this land?”

John paused. A wholly evil bubble of hilarity swelled up in Sherlock’s chest. Suppose John were – with all justice – to name the King as one who could vouch for him?  What would Maynooth, that small-town snob, do then?

The humour dissipated abruptly as he realised exactly why that fantastic vision could never become reality. _A paper nailed awry to a church door._

“There is one within the household of the Crown Princess, who came with her from Gondal; he might recall my presence at meetings of the Modernist party.” John’s voice was thoughtful. “It would be a matter of a few days to send a message.”

“Then the matter is settled.” Adair turned to his uncle. “Is that not agreed?  We can hold this man here until his story is confirmed or denied.”

Maynooth gaped, momentarily. Before he could say anything Moran’s voice cut in. “A wise move. But in the meantime I shall go down to the town and see whether this man has left anything incriminating in his lodgings. Johannes, I shall need two of your men to assist me in the search. Someone who knows that part of the town and its rabbit warrens and bolt holes backwards.”

With a jingle of gear the two captains left the hall, heads bent in discussion.  


	8. Chapter 8

The strain of waiting almost outdid the strain of listening. Nevertheless, by time as it was measured by the hour glass, rather than by the slow fraying of overstretched nerves, Adair returned with commendable speed. Moreover, Sherlock marked a new quality in how the boy held himself, as if his shoulders were starting to adjust to the weight of authority.

“Follow me. My uncle has retired to the chapel to contemplate his soul and the noon bell is about to sound, so most of the garrison will be soon in the buttery. Accordingly, it is unlikely your presence here will be remarked on.”

Adair whisked him through a warren of narrow passages and random spiral staircases, all, as promised, more-or-less deserted. They eventually made their way to a turret room, which Adair unlocked with one of the keys from the bunch that hung at his belt.  

The man sitting on the bunk turned at the sound of the door opening. His eyes widened a little as they entered, but he gave no other indication of surprise. To Sherlock’s relief, the heavy shackles had been removed.

“Now,” Adair said briskly, “for my own satisfaction. Repeat after me –”

“ _Sinuous snake sliding/through misty morning sea-stones/Green as the June grass?_ ” John’s voice was almost mocking as he repeated the tongue-twister in a pitch-perfect Gaaldine accent. Not just any accent, either. The hairs rose on the back of Sherlock’s neck.

“You could have faced it out.” Adair, plainly, had cast Sherlock as his witness to this interrogation. True to his role, he looked forward with a querulous, dispassionate interest. John avoided his gaze, and addressed himself squarely to Adair.

“Perhaps. In any event, ‘facing it out’ would have entailed a lie. I _am_ a man of Gondal. The test is a broken reed, and no man of honour – no matter what side of the border he originates – would shelter behind it.”

Something flared up in Adair’s face, like a comet crossing the night sky. Sherlock knew it instantly for what it was.

_I looked to find an enemy, and found instead a captain of my soul._

Sherlock gave Verney’s dry cough. “Not quite a broken reed. It did demonstrate one – anomaly – in the hall just now.”

_Which blasted Moran’s encircling web apart, thanks be to the Virgin and John’s blessed obstinacy._

Adair swung to face him. “I take it you did not believe Moran’s story of a Gondalian wet nurse?”

Sherlock shrugged. “Oh, she undoubtedly will have been.”  He paused. “As was his mother. And, for that matter, his father.”

Adair looked as if he had lost the power to be surprised. His voice, too, was weary.

“You dropped a hint earlier. Tell me more.”

Sherlock considered. Out of the corner of his eye he caught the subtle lift of John’s mouth and chin, sending a message clear as shouting.

_Adair has been betrayed once today already. He deserves as much truth as you dare give._

“Moran is a nobleman of Gondal, high in the favour of the Palace. He and I – ”  He swallowed, thinking of a long-ago autumn lake in Northern Gondal, a bloody wreck of a corpse lying at the foot of a tree. “Many years ago he killed a very dear friend of mine. Mere days ago he killed my close kinsman. And – while I doubt his own hand did the deed – he was at least implicated in the death of Jem, the tavern-keeper, earlier this week.”

“Ah.”  Adair gave a long, painful exhalation of breath. “Jem tried to warn me about his play. I should have known the accident came too pat to be natural.”

“Moran’s after me, too,” Sherlock said abruptly. “I cannot give you details – there are high matters at stake – but though I’m a man of Gaaldine I am also pledged to advance the Queen of Gondal’s cause. This is no matter of mere sentiment. By making common cause with the Modernist sympathisers within and without Gondal we may blunt the force of any strike James of Gondal is planning against us. And such a strike _is_ being planned, be sure of that.”

“And I let him go down into the town!”

John shrugged. “The wisest course at the time. Your uncle would hardly have backed any other. Who knows what he’d have tried had he felt himself cornered?   And there’s nothing in my lodgings, anyway.”

A hand squeezed over Sherlock’s heart.  

“No, but if he asks around he’ll know Mrs Hudson was there–”  He looked at Adair. “My landlady. Moran will target her. He may _already_ be targeting her. I have to go.”

“No.”  

Sherlock’s head jerked out at Adair’s flat denial. “Wha – ”

The boy nodded towards John. “We all three go. I made myself responsible to my uncle for you. But, also, I made myself responsible for Moran entering the castle. I need to see this matter resolved, now, once and for all.” 

John rose to his feet. “I assure you, you’ll not regret it. You have – it goes without saying – my parole.”

The noontide hush still lay over the castle. Adair led them down yet another precipitous stair and out through a sally-port in the crumbling tower. A steep track zig-zagged through the undergrowth and down to the sloped huddle of red-roofed houses on the town’s outskirts.

The moment they entered the livery yard Sherlock knew something was wrong. The horses were restless in their stalls; the cat which normally slept on the edge of the hay-loft stalked through the yard, its fur up and there was the faintest whiff of something coppery on the damp wind.

He gestured the others to stand in the shelter of the overhang and walked cautiously round the yard. In the farthest corner he found what he was looking for, and beckoned them over.

“Through here,” he said, gesturing at the half-rotten door, its hinges thick with rust, its useless latch hanging askew.

John raised his brows. “But -”

He licked his forefinger, bent, and brushed the ground, raising his hand so that Adair and John could see the red-brown particles clinging to it. 

“Some of the rust was dislodged from those hinges after the rain stopped this morning – it’s not had a chance to be washed into the gutter yet. Let’s see why someone opened that door this morning, for the first time in months.”

The answer sprawled out before they had the door more than half open; the corpse of a man, his eyes wide and staring.  

“One of the two Johannes despatched with Moran?”  Sherlock dropped to his knees besides the body. “Knife between the fourth and fifth ribs, upwards and from behind. The work of a second and he barely bled.”  He rose and slammed the door shut on the corpse. “The other will be upstairs. John, lead the way.”

The second man was sprawled across floor of the sparse upstairs room, his throat slashed from ear to ear.

“ _I will see Moran hanged in chains from the topmost battlements_.”  Adair’s voice was a hoarse whisper. It made him sound like a far older man.

“A worthy ambition. Onwards.”

Sherlock’s hand, despite himself, trembled as he pounded on Mrs Hudson’s front door. There was no response.

“Allow me.” John turned his shoulder, and then charged at the door. It burst open before his onslaught. At the far end of the room –

Mrs Hudson looked up from where she knelt besides the sprawled, bloody mess on the floor. “Oh Mr Verney. Mr Verney. I never meant it. Tell them I never meant it. Oh, Mr Ronald, I didn’t.”

John moved to kneel by the slumped form on the floor, feeling for a pulse at the neck. “You’ll not hang him, Adair. Stone dead. Skull stove in like an egg.”

Sherlock made three short strides across the room, pulled Mrs Hudson to her feet and held her tight against his breast. She fluttered there like a bird. He rested his chin on the top of her head.

“Whatever you intended, the world should stand up and applaud. Have you never heard tales of the tigers of the Indies? Great beasts; cunning, ruthless and remorseless in stalking their prey. Moran was a tiger in human form. The world is left cleaner by his death. However you contrived it.”  

Mrs Hudson’s hand went to her mouth. “That was my best iron skillet. I’ll not fancy using that to cook again.”

Sherlock snorted. “Mrs Hudson, the town should get up a subscription to replace every vessel in your kitchen. In solid gold.”

That provoked a weak chuckle. “Oh, you silly boy. What use would gold be, for pans?”  She turned her head to look at the body. “But I never meant to kill him, I swear.”

His lip curled. “I’m sure the same can’t be said of his intentions towards you. Once he’d put you to the question, your life wouldn’t have been worth four cents purchase. So, he forced his way in, you flung something in his face -”  He bent, and sniffed. “Pickled char?”

“Tench.”  The contemplation of matters domestic seemed to calm Mrs Hudson. “It’s a muddy fish, as a rule, so sousing it in spiced vinegar lifts it a bit. Oh, I got him right in the eyes, but he charged at me, roaring like a bull and that great dagger of his out, so what else could I do?”

“Than trust to your skillet and your good right arm? Many a soldier’s done a great deal worse in the teeth of an unexpected attack. Nevertheless –”  Sherlock looked at Adair. “I don’t doubt any court would acquit on the grounds of self-defence. But I’d liefer not have her implicated in this business. The man was in high favour at the Court of Gondal. His death – richly deserved as it is – should be shrouded in as much misdirection as possible.”

“I have two men dead, Mr Verney.”  Adair’s voice trembled, a little. Doubtless it was the first time he’d come face to face with that aspect of command.  

“And the tavern-keeper’s wife is now a widow,”  Sherlock countered. The boy flushed, as if he had accused him of killing the man himself. Out of the tail of his eye he caught an admonishing glare from John.  

He cleared his throat. “Moran’s crimes are on his own head, not anyone else’s. He is doubtless now answering for them. Nevertheless, we do not honour Moran’s victims by taking the needless risk of adding to them. May I advise you?”

Adair nodded. “Please.”

“Then, I suggest you return to the castle before your absence is remarked on. Let others find your men. Once the alarm is raised, then send out search parties for Moran. Make a big fuss. Make sure that whoever he has posted to act as his messenger to Gondal – there will assuredly be such a one – is aware you are searching. Let him think Moran has made good his escape.”

The look the boy cast at the body spoke volumes.  

“Leave that to me,” Sherlock said. “No; leave it to us. I have to ask you to release John from his parole.”

After an agonisingly long pause, Adair nodded. “Yes. My uncle will be angry but – it was Moran who suggested the arrest. I think in the circumstances I am justified in assuming his motives were not sincere.”

He rose to his feet. “Goodbye. And good luck.”

The door whispered shut behind him. The moment he was gone Sherlock turned to Mrs Hudson, his blood singing with the sheer audacity of the idea which had come to him while Adair had been making his mind up.

 “Mrs Hudson, I’m going to have to ask you to sacrifice that salt-cod barrel from the pantry. It can’t be more than an quarter full, anyway, after Lent.”

“Mr Verney!  You can’t be intending -”

“Why not?   It was Theo who gave me the idea.”

“ _Theo_?”

“ _No-one notices the potman in the inn-yard._ Similarly, with any dray loaded with barrels. Salted and pickled sea fish comes across the plains from the coast; lake and river fish travel down in the opposite direction. And it’s not just Gaaldine; the fish trade is all through the three kingdoms.”

“I’ve heard it said that there’s a kind of lake trout from these very hills that is especially prized in Gondal’s capital.”  John’s eyes glittered with an almost berserker light. “Courtiers occasionally procured barrels of it as gifts for the Palace.”

“Is that so?  Well, in that case our course is clear. Let’s send Lord Moran home.”

Mrs Hudson drew herself up. “I’m not staying for this – and you make sure you leave my kitchen clean, Mr Verney, after - after. And if you need anything of the kind, use the saws from the tool-box, don’t go touching my kitchen knives. Now, you’ll be needing a wagon, and I know where I can get one, but it’ll take me the best part of two turns. So don’t waste the time, either of you.”

With that admonition she was gone. 

The process of forcing Moran’s body into the brine tub, while crude, was at least quick, especially with John’s expert knowledge of anatomy. During the later stages Sherlock put the poker into the kitchen fire so that it glowed red-hot and, just before the barrel was sealed, he seared his badge, the emblem of a single sword, on the underside of the lid.

“There,” he said. “Let James of Gondal know the battle is not going entirely his way.”

John leaned back, wiping his hands on a cloth. “Over a turn of the glass to wait,” he observed. “What now?”

Memory, displaced over the last few hectic hours, flooded back.

“I was awaiting your answer, remember?”

“Ah yes. You were, weren’t you. I asked you for time to consider.”

“Well?  Haven’t you _had_ time?”

“Those hours which have been occupied by my abduction, an interrogation, escape, and the disposal of a corpse?  Not a particularly introspective interval, wouldn’t you say?”

“ _John._ Please. Don’t torment me. Have you an answer?”

John’s eyes slid sideways, the corners of his mouth quirked up. Sherlock felt his stomach turn over.

“Oh, yes. But one better demonstrated than explained, like all the best proofs. So?”

He extended his hand. Sherlock took it in his own and drew him towards the door to his room.  

**Author's Note:**

> The verse used as a test in Chapter Seven was written many years ago by my sister.
> 
> A downloadable ebook version is available [ here ](http://ajhall.shoesforindustry.net/)
> 
> For information about further updates to Gondal and other AJ Hall stories follow @ajhall_fics on Twitter


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